


The Summit of Their Art

by darkrogue1 (Lily_Haydee_Lohdisse)



Series: Mister Zero, Crocodile Master [2]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Ettersberg, Gen, I hallucinated that art - it seemed so real, Magical World War II, My head-canon until proven otherwise, Painting description, The Nightingale|Ajax Son of Telamon /& Mellenby|The Black Library|Patroclus, The battle for Patroclus's body, if anyone manages to paint it like that I'll fucking buy it and put it in my living room, if it doesn't go to a museum first, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 00:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12899862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Haydee_Lohdisse/pseuds/darkrogue1
Summary: A long time ago, after the war, when the survivors were encouraged to take a hobby, Hugh Oswald commissioned a fellow wizard to paint his Troyan War Ettersberg. Now, entering her Master's study for the first time, Lesley sees it.





	The Summit of Their Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexiel-neesan (alyyks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/gifts).



> "‘You should have seen him at Ettersberg,’ he said softly. ‘It was like standing before the walls of Troy. _Aías d’amphì Menoitiádei sákos eurù kalúpsas hestékei hós tís te léon perì hoîsi tékessin_ , but Ajax covered the son of Menoitios with his broad shield and stood fast, like a lion over its children.’" (Hugh Oswald)  
> Ben Aaronovitch - Foxglove Summer
> 
> "We all reached the limitations of our art that night." (Thomas Nightingale)  
> Ben Aaronovitch - Moments One - Nightingale: London 1966
> 
> \------------
> 
> Hypothesis : Albert Woodville-Gentle is not the original Faceless Man. Neither is Geoffrey Wheatcroft.  
> Fact : Since the wizards sat World War I out, their first Gueules Cassées/Broken Faces/Broken Gargoyles would have come from World War II.  
> Fact : Nightingale knows the Faceless spell. (The mask is part of it)  
> Hypothesis : The wizards tried to invent/modify spells to deal with their Faceless Men.  
> Hypothesis : The original Faceless Man was a Master Wizard who lost his face/was wounded/had a disfiguring stroke during World War II or in its aftermaths. (my bet's on the aftermaths)  
> Hypothesis : The Faceless Man took painting, specifically oil painting as a hobby to deal with PTSD. (my bet's Peter saw some of those paintings)  
> Fact : If The Faceless Man was already a Master Wizard in WWII, he is old enough to be either dead or aging backwards.  
> Hypothesis : The Original Faceless Man is alive and aging backwards.

It wasn't even a special occasion, just the first one. A casual 'drop by my study to pick up some books' one. So, obediently, Lesley had skipped down the stairs and turned right and gone right through the door before stopping, transfixed.

 

A painting covered the wall opposite the door. A huge oil painting, maybe three by five meters, in Romantic and realistic style reminding her of Géricault's _Raft of the Medusa_ , of Delacroix's _Barque of Dante_ or _Liberty Guiding the People_. A painting of war. A Masterpiece. The familiar figure standing right in the middle of it was the sight that had halted Lesley in her track. Nightingale, right as he was now, somewhere in his mid-forties and carrying worries that made him seem as old as the world, but in uniform and with blue eyes, fighting with magic, at Ettersberg.

 

Peter could have spent hours studying that face only, but Lesley wasn't about to let herself be distracted. She took a few steps forward and set about it methodically. The main subject, right in the center, was a young fallen soldier carrying book bags, above him, Nightingale, protecting, fighting. Left and right, two opposite armies reaching for the fallen. With all the classical reading she had had to do lately, Lesley's mind jumped to the Iliad and the battle for Patroclus's body. And indeed, other elements in the construction hinted at the parallel.

 

It was dusk, with dark clouds covering the majority of the orange rose sky. On the far left, the partly burning Greek fleet, some plane carcasses smoking or in flames and one intact glider by the water, in front of the west horizon. On the far right the fair stone walls of Troy catching the last lights of the sunset, a strong fortress with World War II watchtowers and spotlights, on high alert. On the plain in the background, dark shapes let the mind guess about bodies on the ground, of a massacre in it's ending phase.

 

In the foreground, a dozen men with visible faces and identifiable uniforms, on both sides in hues of green and brown, half the Englishmen, half the Germans. On the left, slightly further than the others, a young Englishman, younger than her, with a metal-ended wooden staff in his left hand and in clear movement towards the center scuffle, was bending down, reaching with his right hand towards another similar staff by a comrade's body whose face was half hidden in shadows. The angle of his body drew the eye back towards the center of the painting and the other young soldier on the ground.

 

A young beautiful white man, lying on his side, facing the spectator, his right hand reaching over his head. His hair was disarrayed, falling over his brow. His body took most of the length of the painting, with his arm reaching to the left and his feet dug in the earth on the German right. The top of his uniform vest was unbuttoned, some darker shade on his flank suggested the wound that had tripped him, but with no particular visibility of it. He had been, still was, carrying bags.

 

A heavy backpack still on his back, the weight of it pulling him to the side, a canvas bag on a long shoulder strap resting by his left leg, another canvas bag on his other shoulder, half-hidden under his right arm, and at the foremost forefront of the painting, another canvas bag, wrung open, half-spilling his contents and books scattered on the dirt. Some golden lettering on the leather bound books was legible and read Science or Power or Future. This man was the Carrier, the books were the Black Library.

 

On his left, two other young Englishmen were half-bending or crouching, frozen in motion, reaching towards him - and the books - in despair and concern and maybe slight greed for one of them with the clear intent to pull him back with them.

 

Over the Carrier and the Books, cutting an edge between the two camps, a fine white line in a parabola with a slight fuzzy underside indicated a magical shield. On the other side of it, on the forefront of the German side, a soldier of the Reich was crouching down, coiling up, ready to spring forward on the body the moment the shield dropped.

 

And over the body and the books, on the German side of the battleground, clearly casting the shield, the Nightingale stood in a posture of defiance, facing the incoming enemies. It was not really a Gandalf moment, not a 'You shall not pass' statement, more one that said 'Over my dead body', 'I intend to go down swinging' and 'I'm holding nothing back'. His staff was at his feet in the shadows, lying across his right foot and ankle, probably already useless. He held his left hand down in an open grip, probably in an effort of concentration to maintain the shield, and, grim but formidable and awesome, was in the midst of the gesture for casting a fireball, the spark of a light already forming over his right hand.

 

On the top of the German side, between Nightingale and the city walls, a German officer was falling backwards, his knees slightly bent and his torso illuminated from the inside by an unnatural light. His face was not entirely visible anymore. Closer to the front, two other soldiers were finishing to cast something huge, the magic already on the way towards the standing man. Those two were the Nightingale's current target. And a few step behind them, on the far right of the painting, a young German wizard had a hand at his hip on his holster. Frozen in the gesture to reach for his gun.

 

On the Englishmen's side, Nightingale was the eldest, the protector, but Lesley was more intrigued by the young men. Some of the faces she even recognised, having seen them in her Master's illusions. Sharply she turned towards the man.

 

The Faceless Man was sitting at his desk and his blank mask on, watching her, his grey eyes slightly bemused.

 

"It wasn't like that, you know." He said, and Lesley let him talk. "The weather was less fair. It had rained earlier and there was mud everywhere. There were more trees around - though maybe by the time we went through not so many - the hill was steeper, or maybe we had the poor luck of getting stuck in a ditch. There wasn't only one Carrier, for the Library."

 

He took a shaky breath and went on. "We weren't that young. Most of us. Well Hugh was. Hugh Oswald, on the left, picking up Martin's staff. He is the one that commissioned me for this piece. And He is right as I remember Him." He meant the Nightingale, or maybe Thomas. "But the rest of us ? I had to draw from memory, the young faces." He made a gesture and the blank canvas on his face shifted to give the illusion of each of the young Englishmen in succession, as they were in the painting, and some others who weren't there. "Nigel had a stroke. Rupert... well. I couldn't draw them like that." He made another gesture and morphed into more faces, more quickly this time, the broken features mingling too quickly for the eye to really discern.

 

"Mellenby." Lesley said.

 

He nodded. "And you have seen my face."

 

"What were you doing then ?" She ventured. But he was in a telling mood and he answered.

 

"Pulling the wounded back up, shouting at the men to organise the movement and order replacements for the fallen." He passed a hand on his mask as he remembered. "Helping carry the Library myself, while casting all the healing spells I knew, and more, twisting other spells to plug wounds and keep the men alive and moving. Isaac carried the Library with us back to the glider, but when my staff ran out and I... he had already been dead for _minutes_." His voice trailed off.

 

He paused for a moment, then picked up with renewed energy. "And then He gave up his own place for us and the Library. Well, maybe for one of us more than the others but still." He shook his head, in clear adulation.

 

Lesley turned back to the picture. In a few moments, just seeing this, she had learned more about her Master than she had in months of training. The painting was unsigned. "What is it called ?" She asked.

 

"Hugh commissioned me for 'Ajax and Patroclus'." Faceless said. "But I call it 'Ettersberg'."

 

 


End file.
